A Branch of Phonetics: Articulatory Phonetics

Every day we hear many types of sounds. Phone ringing, dogs barking, people talking. The science of acoustics studies sounds in general, and phonetics studies the sounds used in human language. Phonetics is part of the wider field of linguistics, which studies language as a whole.

There are 3 branches of phonetics in linguistics. Articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, auditory phonetics. In this text, I will simply introduce and explain articulatory phonetics to give information about our vocal organs and how sound is produced. Here are simple descriptions of the vocal organs.

When we start from the bottom, there are the lungs and the respiratory system. The air from the lungs passes between the vocal cords, which are located in the larynx (Adam’s apple) area at the top of the windpipe. The space between vocal cords is known as the glottis. Next, there is a pharynx. The pharynx is the technical name of the throat. If you look in the mirror, lower your tongue, and say ah, you can see the back of your throat. It serves as a tube connecting the larynx with the oral and nasal cavities.

The other organs are divided into two cavities. First, there is the oral cavity, the mouth. It includes lips, teeth, alveolar ridge (a bumpy area just behind the upper teeth), and two parts of the roof of the mouth called the hard palate, and the soft palate. The hard palate directly is our palate but the soft palate (technically called velum) is a little back of our palate which is more smoother area. Then we see Uvula, our little tongue back of our throat and our tongue. Finally, we have an important organ called the epiglottis at the area of the pharynx and bottom of our uvula. Its function is to prevent food from going into the larynx.

As for the nasal cavity, it is not very detailed compared to the oral cavity. The upper surface of the soft palate is called velic surface. We can refer to velic opening as nasal or nasalized sounds. If you are familiar with French, you know that a word like un ‘a, an’ has a nasalized vowel.

These are the bases of the vocal organs. For some people who are curious about our sound-produced articulators, it may be interesting to learn.